Author: kmessner

Skating, Frogs & Sea Monsters on World Read Aloud Day!

March 9th is World Read Aloud Day — a holiday that might not make it onto every calendar, but it sure is circled on mine.  Reading aloud has always been a big deal to me…from my toddler days when I’d stalk my parents’ dinner guests with a big pile of books in my arms to now, when I read aloud to kids both at home and at school every day.

I shared a lot more thoughts on reading aloud last spring, in this open letter to the Association of Booksellers for Children, when The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. won the E.B. White Read Aloud Award.  But right now…what I’d really like to do is read.

Here are three videos of me reading aloud in my living room.  No fancy cameras, no lights, no makeup…just a fireplace, a flipcam and three books.  (One of them, SUGAR AND ICE, came out in December, but the other two aren’t out yet, so you’re getting a special WRAD sneak preview!)  So get yourself a cup of hot chocolate or a carton of milk (I’m guessing some of you are watching at school today) and enjoy.

No matter who you are or where you are, I hope you’ll share a book with someone today, too!

Butterflies Go Free in Montreal!

I’m looking out the window at nearly two feet of new snow tonight, but before this latest winter storm hit, we got a welcome taste of spring in Montreal this weekend.

Butterflies Go Free is an annual event at the Montreal Botanical Gardens. Thousands of butterflies — almost all from butterfly farms in Costa Rica — are hatched in the main greenhouse, where visitors young and old can walk among them. It was especially fun to see the Blue Morpho butterflies this year.

We wondered if any of these were relatives of the butterflies we’d seen in the rain forest in Costa Rica this summer!

The butterflies were stunning — moths, too — and spending a couple hours with them made me feel like Spring isn’t so far away. Here are a few more photos…just in case you’re still shoveling out, too!

Remember…on the calendar at least…just two more weeks until Spring!

REAL REVISION has a cover!

As many of you know, my first teacher resource book, REAL REVISION: AUTHORS’ STRATEGIES TO SHARE WITH STUDENT WRITERS, comes out this May. It’s a book designed to help teachers – and anyone who teaches writing, really – share strategies for revision that go beyond quick proofreading and spell-checking.  What I love most about this project was that I got to interview dozens of my favorite middle grade authors about how they revise their books and then translate those strategies into activities that teachers can use in the classroom. Of course, the book is loaded with stories, tips, and tricks from my own writing desk and my classroom, too.

Here’s what the cover will look like!

Word is that Stenhouse will be offering a sneak preview of this book online in May – I’ll be sure to share a link later on!